Welcome to Paradise
by TheShadowArchitect
Summary: BZ doesn't do that- but fentanyl does. A fix-it for "Mason Cable Choices". Either a pretty lame one-shot or a much better longer fic, haven't quite decided.


The old house stood at the end of a long gravel drive flanked by vegetable gardens. It was worn but well maintained, whitewashed slats and deceptively modern windows with a wide porch, handpump well, solar panel array, clothesline, tilapia pond, and a small flock of chickens in the back. Behind that was a neighbor's sea of adolescent cornstalks standing perfectly still in the late July evening.

Mac sat comfortably in a low-slung hammock chair on the porch. Scattered around him were bits of wire and tubing, a couple of electric motors he'd pulled out of various old machines, a few of his favorite rolls of duct tape, and a rugged old laptop queued up with YouTube tutorials set at the lowest resolution, pulling sluggish satellite internet from a dish on the roof. Just inside the house, an inverter whined as it powered both the modem and the strings of covered LED bulbs that cast a contented glow on the outdoor workstation, competing only with the sounds of crickets and the chickens' occasional clucks and rarely the laptop's tinny speakers.

He took a drink from a ball jar of iced tea. The air was soft and warm and just the right amount of humid- the kind of perfect summer night he remembered idealistically from his youth but had forgotten could actually exist.

He crinkled his nose a little. The pollen must be up again and he almost wanted to sneeze, but couldn't quite make it happen. And there was an almost burning feeling in the back of his throat. He coughed. The feeling got worse. He coughed harder, almost gagging on something metallic and bitter. The second he closed his eyes to sneeze the world disintegrated and he felt himself being pulled hard and unpleasantly through a void, choking and gagging on the feeling in his nose and throat.

He was lying on his back on something cold and hard, his hands scrabbling dumbly against the surface as he tried to force himself over onto his side. His nose and mouth were on fire and tasted vile, like he'd snorted baking soda.

"Mac!"

….Jack?

"…gimme… a sec'" he gasped, then groaned as he finally managed to roll onto his side, his chest heaving and his eyes streaming. He was shaking, hard enough that his teeth were chattering. He tried to force his muscles to relax but couldn't. His chest and back ached and his abdomen was so tight he felt like he was going to throw up. He was aware he was making some kind of noise, like a humming in his throat, but he couldn't stop it, nor could he control it or force it into words.

Something was in his nose and after a few seconds he regained enough sense to reach up and pull it out. A slimy green tube that relieved some of the gagging. He vaguely recognized it as one of the basic airways he'd been taught to use in TCCC training in the Army. He heaved a few more breaths, gritting his teeth and trying to get his body to _stop_.

"You're okay, Mac. You're okay. Keep breathing." Gayle's voice now. Her hand was on his shoulder. He wanted to ask what had happened, but before he could form words his memory caught up. Mason in the interrogation room. The false tooth he didn't react to until it was too late. The spray of something and Mason forcing the table towards him, catching him in the stomach and forcing a sharp intake of breath. He didn't remember much after that, but there was probably at least a moment or two before he was on the ground. He'd clearly been out for a while if they'd been able to get the nasal trumpet in him. His arm stung a little as he bent it, there was an IV in the crook of his elbow.

"Wha…?" He groaned.

"Fentanyl. Probably carfentanil or sufentanil actually based on the amount you breathed and your response. You were out for more than 20 minutes, Mac. Took 16mg of naloxone to get you back." Her own voice was muffled. If he could see anything else but her black-clad thigh he would expect she was wearing a mask. He didn't quite have the control yet to look up.

Moments later, the violent shivering was starting to die down. He let his eyes drift shut only to feel himself back on his back again with Gayle's knuckles in his chest. He groaned.

"Stick around, Mac. We can't hand you off to the medics until the lockdown is lifted. Shouldn't be more than ."

"Lemme sit up." He said, forcing his body to comply. His mind felt shockingly clear but also severely on-edge, like something else dreadful could happen at any moment and he'd be too incapacitated to stop it.

He did, eventually, manage to sit up against the nearest concrete wall. On the ground was an open AED case, empty naloxone cartridges both nasal and IV, the remainders of the IV start kit and empty saline syringes, vials of his blood, other packaging he didn't recognize, some of what he could only assume was his own blood soaked into the unfinished concrete from the IV start, and a bag-valve-mask.

"Sorry." He said, gesturing to what had clearly been an effort. His voice was a little rougher than he liked.

"Please, you know you're not _at all_ my record- you're not even this _building's_ record for total amount of naloxone used in one go." Gayle said. "I don't crawl out of my dungeon anymore with fewer than 10 cartridges strapped to my person." It spoke to the nature of the epidemic that it had reached the Phoenix. It wasn't as comforting to Mac as she probably thought it was.

Satisfied he wasn't going to keel over again, Gayle gathered the vials of blood into a biohazard bag and wrote his name and date of birth carefully on the front in sharpie.

"Mason?"

Gayle sighed. "We don't know. He escaped up to the roof into a helicopter. Everyone's working on it now, but I don't have an answer for you yet." Mac felt a little empty. He was glad Gayle had given him the information but wasn't thrilled about the implications. It was about to be a long night.


End file.
